Tag: goals

How to split your goals into bite-size pieces in order to accomplish great things!

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Make 2018 Your Best Year Ever!

A year from now, what do you want to have accomplished?

2018 is just a week old and it seems way too early to be thinking about January 2019. A year is a long time and at the same time it’s also short. Time’s funny that way.

You can accomplish a lot in just 12 months if you lay out your goals, break them into smaller steps, and make sure to take one step daily.

Sounds easy enough, right? But committing to doing something for 365 days is pretty daunting.

Take those 12 months and break them into quarters. What can you do in the next 90 days to be fitter and healthier? That’s a little bit easier to chew, isn’t it?

Now take each month and split that into quarters. What can you do in the next 4 weeks to be fitter and healthier. Four weeks is definitely doable.

Divide the weeks into quarters. What can you do in the next 7 days to get yourself better? I’m pretty sure you see what’s going on here.

Finally take those 7 days and ask yourself, what can I do today to improve?

This is how you make big changes happen. Pick big goals and ask yourself what are the steps to get there. Keep breaking things down until you have clear action steps you can act upon today.

You want to lose 50lbs. In 2018? Awesome. That’s a big goal. Obviously you can’t accomplish that in a week (at least not without a knife).

Dropping 50 lbs. in a year equates to an average 12.5 lbs. every quarter. That’s definitely less intimidating now, isn’t it?

It’s just over 4 lbs. a month.

It’s just under 1 lb. per week.

Just like that, it doesn’t seem so big, does it? Aiming for 1 lb. per week is just a way to restate 50 lbs. per year.Of course, this is an average and progress is never perfectly linear ‘cause we’re people not robots.

You can see that shooting for 1 lb. a week won’t mean you have to change things up drastically in your day to day life. Making small changes like drinking more water (or substituting diet soda for regular soda) add up to big differences over time.

There’s no need to try to totally revolutionize your life. Trying to transform from someone who doesn’t pay attention to your diet and hardly ever exercises into a person who works out every day and eats “perfectly” is just setting yourself up to come up short.

Make small changes, especially at first. They may seem insignificant but they really aren’t. You’re stacking wins.

Why is that important?

Stacking wins builds your confidence. You said you were going to drink more water and cut back from 3 cans of soda per day to 2. And you did it. That’s not nothing. You just proved to yourself that you can make and keep a promise to yourself. You’re more confident because you now know you can trust yourself a little bit more than before.

Then you make one more small change. Maybe it’s going from 2 sodas to 1 a day. Or you go for a 10-minute walk after lunch. You don’t have to change a lot at a time.

Just keep stacking wins. The best part is you don’t have to be perfect. There are going to be setbacks and slip-ups. That’s okay, just get back on track as soon as you can.

That’s just one example of breaking things down into smaller, actionable steps. It can work for you no matter what your goals are.

I hope this helps! Thanks for reading. Any questions or comments, let me know.

Often they’re used interchangeably but there’s a subtle and important distinction.

Exercise is a means to its own end. Training is a means to a different end. In other words, you exercise for its own sake. Whether it’s running, swimming, biking, dancing, lifting weights or any other physical activity, you’re doing it because you enjoy it.

When you’re training, it’s for another purpose. It may still be enjoyable, of course. But you’re following a plan with a specific goal. For example, your bike workouts are to prepare you for a specific race.

Neither is better than the other.

The reasons I have my clients train rather than exercise is because having a specific goal is really motivating. The goals are theirs, not mine. You’re not going to be motivated for my goals. At least I hope you won’t.

When you have a goal in mind that you really want, a lot of awesome things happen. You have a deadline. It’s not “some day”, it’s a particular time. Maybe it’s 12 weeks, 6 months, or a year. In fact, it’s a great idea to have a mix of shorter-term goals on the road to your longer-term goals.

You can think of the deadline as a finish line, if that’s more appealing to you. Either way, it means that you don’t have time to mess around. Each of your training sessions is a step closer. If you skip a session, you lose a step. Sticking to the plan matters.

It helps you build your mental toughness. You learn to set aside your feelings and do the work. There will be days when you absolutely will not feel like working out. You may even hear a little voice in your head suggesting, “it’s only one day”. You learn to drown that out and push through any resistance.

You use your toughness and the knowledge of an upcoming finish line as fuel to keep you going through even the toughest workouts.

When you learn this, you can apply it to any aspect of your life. Do what needs to be done, when it needs to be done, regardless of how you feel at the moment.

Let me say again, that there’s absolutely nothing wrong with exercising. It sure beats the hell out of sitting on the couch all day. It’s a great way to be physically active. It’s a great flipside to training.

Training is really taxing mentally and physically, so sometimes it’s nice to just exercise. You still get in your workouts but it’s not quite such a grind. Taking some time off to just exercise without a particular end goal can be recharge your batteries. But exercising all the time without a goal can become boring. It’s a good idea to use both phases in cycles. Alternating a few months of training with a few weeks of just exercise can keep you motivated and progressing without wearing you down for a long, long time.

Thanks for reading. Hope this helps. Any questions or comments, leave ‘em below.

Any time you hear someone say they’ve got the hottest new “hack”, they’re talking tactics. There’s nothing inherently bad about tactics. In fact, you need to use them in order to accomplish your goals.

But just lumping a bunch of tactics together probably isn’t going to get you want. Looking at tactics is looking at a small part of a picture, zoomed in all the way. You can see great details, but it’s impossible to see the whole picture.

Strategy is zooming out to see a larger part of the big picture. You use strategy as a wider-scale approach to accomplishing an objective.

The objective is the overall goal you want to achieve.

Put another way, the Objective is the whole picture; the Strategy is the picture divided into smaller parts; Tactics are the magnified close-ups.

Objective → strategy → tactics

Here are two examples to show you how this might work in real life:

Example 1:

Objective: Have $1 million dollars [you can pause and raise your pinky now, if you want]

Strategy: Make money

Tactics: get a job, buy lottery tickets, rob banks

Once you have your objective (what you want), you’ll have to choose your strategy (your broad plan or plans how), which will lead you to your tactics (the small, direct actions you take).

To get your objective, you can use one or a few strategies, and you have a ton of choices when it comes to tactics.

I’m not recommending you take steroids. Just using it as one example of a tactic a person could use in an attempt to achieve a goal. You want to think about all three levels in the hierarchy before taking action.

For any given Objective, let’s understand that there is more than one Strategy to accomplish it. In fact, you’d probably do well to implement more than one. You don’t need a million, by the way, just a couple. Similarly, within any Strategy, there are countless Tactics you can use. Remain flexible in your approach when choosing Strategies. Be particularly flexible in adding, implementing, and switching Tactics.

Your objective is the most important thing. The strategy is the next important thing because it will dictate which tactics you employ.

If you don’t decide on a strategy before you choose your tactics, basically, you’re just guessing. By choosing your strategy first, you’ll more easily be able to tell which tactics make sense for you and which don’t.

Here’s where we get to the fitness “hacks”. Maybe a new workout plan or new diet or new exercise device fits into your strategy. But maybe it doesn’t. Know your strategy and you’ll have the answer.

Objective: What’s the one big thing you’re after?

Strategy: What’s your wider-scale plan to make that happen?

Tactics: What are the steps in that plan?

Thanks for reading. I hope this helps. Any questions or comments, leave ‘em below.

Inspiration is overrated. Sure, it has value and can be useful. Think back on the last time you felt truly inspired. How long did that inspiration last? What did you do about it? Let’s talk about what inspiration actually is. Oxford defines it thus : the process of being mentally stimulated to do or feel something.

It’s the spark.

At its root, inspiration is a feeling, an emotion. By definition, that means it’s ephemeral. You can feel it very strongly at the moment, but it’s just not going to last. You can harness the feeling to help you. Or it can be like letting your inner 2 year old be in charge. The intensity of the feeling is really strong but is what it’s inspiring you to do actually going to help your long term goals?

Motivation is overrated. Again, let’s define Motivation. It’s the why. There are two types of motivation. The first is external, it comes to you from someone or something else. A parent motivates a child to keep his/her room clean often by threat or promise of reward. Does it work? Perhaps, but again, only for a while. Chances are it won’t be long before the kid requires another dose of motivation. (I swear, I don’t hate kids. Well, not all kids.)

Internal motivation is different. Continuing the example, this would be the type of kid who cleans his/her room on his/her own. Internal motivation comes from (duh) within. It’s hard to cultivate, but it lasts. It’s about setting and living up to your own personal standards.

Being an adult means choosing what you prioritize. No one is going to tell you why it’s important (or for some of us, if it’s important) to keep your living space clean.

Motivation is also emotional. The authority figure promises a reward or a punishment that spurs you to action. The fear of the punishment and the hope for the reward are both emotions. They do have some value, but again, it’s short-lived.

The Internal Motivation is a more deeply-seated emotion because it’s from within you. Something you want will always be a more powerful driver than something someone else wants you to do. However, desire is still a feeling, which means it also waxes and wanes.

Discipline is underrated. This gives us the how. Discipline is the control that results from training. It’s the structure or framework for the actions that will lead us to achieve our goals. Discipline is tied very closely to habits. It’s the willingness to apply the habits consistently over the long term, regardless whether we feel like it or not.

We see right there that discipline is more powerful and more durable than emotion. You do what you need to do, when it needs to be done, whether you feel like it or not. Think how much you can accomplish this way.

Chances are, you exercise it in some areas of your life already. If you have kids, you bathe, feed, and clothe them daily. Aren’t there days when you don’t feel like it? Yet you do it anyway because it needs to be done.

The good news is that means you know for a fact that you can implement discipline in your life consistently. Now what do you think would happen if you applied it to your fitness goals?

Habits are underrated. This is the what. Put another way, Habits are the summation of all the small behaviors that make up the discipline. These are the actions within the framework of discipline. We all have habits anyway. Think about all the things we do pretty much every day. Most of the things we do each day are things we do so often that we barely think about them. Brushing your teeth in the morning, getting dressed, your path to work.

In the fitness and health context, some of these habits are what time of day you workout, the structure and order of your workouts, and of course, all the foods and drinks we take in.

These aren’t emotional. In fact, when our habits are deeply ingrained, we do them without conscious thought or feeling. You’re not actively thinking, first I pick up the toothbrush, then I take the cap of the toothpaste, etc. You don’t feel, “oh no, if I don’t brush my teeth, they’ll rot!” every time you start the process. (Or maybe you do. Ha.) It’s pretty much autopilot.

Habit are just things we do. This is why it’s so imperative to actively cultivate ones that will help us achieve what we’re really after.

Ideally, you’d use all four of these concepts together to Chase down your goals at top speed. But life is rarely ideal, and when it is, that’s just for a short time. Take full advantage of those times when you’re Inspired and Motivated to use Discipline in your daily Habits.

Discipline and Habits are at the core though. This pair will keep you marching towards your goals when the other two are flagging. They are the most powerful tools we have in order to accomplish our goals.

Thanks for reading. Any questions or comments, please leave them below.

When you first start anything new (walking, reading, a sport, a musical instrument) you will be terrible. You will suck. And that’s good.

It’s good for several reasons.

Perspective – even if you are an expert in one area, you will be a know-nothing in most others. Keeping perspective will keep you in the mentality of the student.

Learn Fast – when you’re first acquiring a new skill, you learn fast. It doesn’t feel that way, but you do. Going from zero to one is a bigger jump than from one to two.

Application – The stages of learning: novice, beginner, intermediate, proficient are the same for any skill. You can’t skip. Going through them is how you gain experience. This experience is indirectly transferable as is the accompanying confidence. You probably don’t remember learning to walk. Perhaps you can recall learning to swim or ride a bike. You start off totally unsure. You have to think about each action before you do it. The task seems really complicated. As you practice, you get better and you have to actively think less. This happens each time you try to learn something new. But, you don’t start exactly from scratch even if the new thing is totally different. You have the experience of having gone through the stages. You know that you can learn. You’ve learned to learn.

Become comfortable being uncomfortable – The best way to grow is to struggle. This is an important concept. Obviously there are times where it’s valuable to be comfortable. Being uncomfortable is stressful. Staying in a stressful state for a long time clearly isn’t ideal. But neither is never challenging yourself. The edges of discomfort is where we find our limits. We can’t push our limits if we don’t know where they are and test them from time to time. It also reminds us not to take our comforts for granted.

Inoculation – falling off the bike. Before it happens, it’s terrifying. When it happens it’s scary. It might even hurt a bit. But not forever. The next time it’s much less scary. Going through the process of being bad at something teaches you it’s really not so bad to be bad at something, at first.

Process is the thing – Learning to persist is priceless. This goes hand in hand with intentionally placing yourself in situations where you’re uncomfortable. The achievement of goals is kind of like signposts. They can tell you where you are but that’s about it. The process of getting there is the real value. Having a skill is great but learning a skill is growth. And growth is everything.

It’s halftime 2017. We’re into summer now, time for beaches, barbecues, vacations and fun. It also means the year is halfway over. Remember six months ago when you decided you were going to do all these great things this year? Are you on track?

Most of us start the year off all fired up about all the changes we’re going to make. Then a few weeks or months in we let ourselves get sidetracked. Maybe this happened to you.

We have six months left to finish all the things we set out to do in ‘17. Perhaps you’re on track and you’ve been diligently marching towards your goals. That’s awesome. I suspect you’re in the minority though.

For the rest of us, this is a call to action. New Year’s isn’t the only time you can resolve to change for the better.

If your goal is to lose 100 lbs or 50 lbs or whatever, and it hasn’t happened yet, don’t give up. If you wanted to add 100 lbs or however much to your squat and you’re not on pace, don’t quit.

Each meal is an opportunity to get back on task to your fat loss goal.

Each day is a chance to have a great workout.

Progress never happens as fast as we’d like it. And it definitely doesn’t happen if we don’t put in the work consistently.

So, if you’ve let the first six months of ‘17 slip through your fingers, there’s nothing you can do about it. You can’t get the time back. It’s pointless to dwell on feeling bad about it.

Instead, let’s regroup, refocus, and rededicate ourselves to take action in the right direction. Today.

Just like halftime in a basketball or football game, it’s time to game plan for the second half. There is nothing we can do about the score of the first half. That is done. Figure out the things that have been working well. Discern the things that areas that haven’t. And come up with a strategy for accomplishing our goals.

Swearing to eat perfectly and workout daily for the rest of the year is pointless. We just proved we won’t do that, didn’t we?

Concentrate on making a conscious choice to narrow our focus. Don’t worry about October or December now. You know your long term goals. But they’re often abstract and seem far away. It’s time to take daily action towards them.

Small, daily progress towards the target adds up over time. The steps we take daily are tangible and measurable.

Do one thing to put you closer to your goals today. One thing. Today.

If you’re trying to drop fat, maybe the thing is choosing to have a smaller meal for lunch today. Or going for a walk. If you’re looking to build muscle and strength, make sure you have a great workout today. Give 100% effort.